Measuring attention to reward as an individual trait: the value-driven attention questionnaire (VDAQ)

Abstract

Reward history is a powerful determinant of what we pay attention to. This influence of reward on attention varies substantially across individuals, being related to a variety of personality variables and clinical conditions. Currently, the ability to measure and quantify attention-to-reward is restricted to the use of psychophysical laboratory tasks, which limits research into the construct in a variety of ways. In the present study, we introduce a questionnaire designed to provide a brief and accessible means of assessing attention-to-reward. Scores on the questionnaire correlate with other measures known to be related to attention-to-reward and predict performance on multiple laboratory tasks measuring the construct. In demonstrating this relationship, we also provide evidence that attention-to-reward as measured in the lab, an automatic and implicit bias in information processing, is related to overt behaviors and motivations in everyday life as assessed via the questionnaire. Variation in scores on the questionnaire is additionally associated with a distinct biomarker in brain connectivity, and the questionnaire exhibits acceptable test-retest reliability. Overall, the Value-Driven Attention Questionnaire (VDAQ) provides a useful proxy-measure of attention-to-reward that is much more accessible than typical laboratory assessments.

Figure 1.

Scatterplots showing the relationship between VDAQ score and the other questionnaire assessments obtained.

Figure 2.

Example trial for each phase of Experiment 2. Participants were rewarded for fixating color-defined targets in the Training Phase. These reward-associated colors then served as task-irrelevant distractors during the Test Phase, in which participants searched for the uniquely-shaped target. Finally, susceptibility to distraction by non-reward-related stimuli was measured using the Additional Singleton Task, which was similar to the test phase except that the critical distractor was a uniquely-colored item not previously associated with reward.

Figure 3.

Example trial for the Training Phase of Experiment 3. Participants clicked on different areas of scenes using the mouse cursor and received positive or negative feedback depending on where they clicked. In the test phase, participants freely viewed these same scenes while eye position was measured using an eye tracker.

Figure 4.

Example trials for the decision-making task used for Experiment 4. Participants clicked on one of four colored boxes and received a monetary reward, an electric shock, both, or neither for their choice. Different colors were associated with different probabilities of reward and shock.

Figure 5.

Scatterplot showing the relationship between attention-to-reward across experiments (z-scored separately for each experiment) and VDAQ score.

Figure 6.

Regions of the visual cortex and caudate tail where functional connectivity with the VTA/NAcc seed was predicted by VDAQ score, with higher VDAQ scores indicating greater functional connectivity.